A few months ago, I took a step I should’ve taken several years ago and switched the rest of my immediate family to Pixel phones. My husband was already sporting and loving his Pixel 7 Pro, and my mother-in-law was using my old Pixel 6a, but my mom, dad, and aunt were all still carrying older OnePlus or Samsung phones. Since they’re not interested in state-of-the-art tech, I dug into the archive and found a Pixel 7a, 6 Pro, and 7 Pro to upgrade them to.
Going in, I knew this would be a big departure for them. It would’ve been much safer to stick with a familiar Android skin without trying to introduce them to something new, but the learning curve turned out to be not as steep as I expected. Now, I’m just reaping the benefits of this change.
Did you convert your entire family to one brand of smartphones? 47 votes Yes. 36 % I'm in the process of doing that. 19 % I tried and I failed. 9 % No, I don't see the need to. 36 %
Why Pixels and not something else?
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
To answer this question, I’d have to go back nearly a decade and explain why I made the decision to buy my first Pixel 2 XL. A the time, I needed it for my tech writing job, I also liked the idea of a clean Android slate, and I was still searching for the excellence in Android cameras that I had experienced with Nokia’s phones. Since then, I’ve bought or tested nearly every new Pixel, so I’m very familiar with Google’s flavor of Android, with all of its quirks and strengths.
The decision to go with Pixels for my family wasn’t a matter of luck; it was pure strategy. The idea came to me when my aunt’s OnePlus 9 stopped reading SIM cards, and she urgently needed a functional phone. Since I live in another country, I couldn’t come to her rescue in person, but I remembered I’d left my old Pixel 2 XL in a box at my parents’ place just for situations like these. She retrieved it, I helped her set it up remotely, and she used it for several months without a hiccup.
When I had to give my aunt my old Pixel 2 XL in a pinch, I discovered the perks of a Pixel experience for both her and me.
That experience made me realize the perks of the Pixel experience: I could easily troubleshoot her situation from thousands of miles away, and I didn’t have to hide half of the apps as I did on her OnePlus because they were bloatware I didn’t want her to open. Plus, she got used to Pixel UI very quickly, and all of the photos she was now sending me were crystal clear instead of a blurry mess. I’d also expected the Pixel 2 XL to be slow or painful to use, but nope. For a phone that was seven years old, it had held up pretty well.
The more I weighed the pros and cons, the more I realized that a Pixel was the right decision for my family, even an older one. Despite them living in an unsupported country where Pixel repairs aren’t easy and most of Google’s special features don’t work (like Satellite SOS, fall detection, car crash detection, and all of the smart calling features, etc.), Pixel ownership seemed like an overall net positive.
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